


I Can Hear You

by Kitt_Monroe



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Gen, Light Angst, Spoilers for chapter 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 00:56:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1668794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitt_Monroe/pseuds/Kitt_Monroe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She liked to pretend she didn't hear them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can Hear You

She liked to pretend she didn't hear them, and she never told them she heard, but she did.

Did hear them, that is.

Heard them talk about her, all secretive and careful like they were freaking James Bond or something. But nobody was James Bond when Mioda was around.

"Um… This slightly overwhelming person is our Super High-school Level Light Music Club Member," she remembered Komaeda explaining once. "But, I also heard she left the band over creative differences. She’s now pursuing a solo career."

"…Creative differences?" Hinata had repeated.

"Are you intrigued?!" Mioda had inquired at the time. Hinata was surprised that she could hear the two of them whispering a few feet away. Of course she could hear them, she wasn't deaf. Even a person with regular hearing probably could have heard them.

She had read somewhere in some magazine article that experts of psychology decided the volume threshold of human hearing was a pocket watch ticking from twenty feet away. Mioda didn't believe that; she was almost positive she could hear far better than that. She had always had extremely sensitive hearing, and it always seemed to surprise people, even after she had mentioned it over and over.

She honestly didn't know why it surprised people so much; when Hanamura's party food was so delicious (actually, she never learned that for certain, since she never had the chance to eat any, but she had to assume it was marvelous (because he was, you know, a _cook_ )), she hadn't felt it necessary to constantly act shocked at how delectable it was. When Sonia always spoke with a regal air and a barely pronounced knowledge that she was higher up in society than everyone else (since she was a _princess_ and all), Mioda didn't think she had to keep on noting how unique or shocking that was. So why was Mioda different? She was a musician. Did nobody else think it made sense she would have good hearing?  
Their collective ignorance and poor memory made it possible for them to make remarks about how "somewhat overwhelming" she was with alarming frequency and at a proximity to her that maybe they didn't think was close, but it was close enough.

"Do you ever notice that Mioda-san, um...I don't know, speaks a little more loudly than people normally do?" she would hear Tsumiki ask, for example. Mioda would make a calculated decision to look away so as to give off the impression she wasn't listening.

"I think she just talks loud so she can hear herself," Souda would answer, and Mioda would be able to feel their eyes boring into the back of her head. Like she was some kind of museum exhibit or circus sideshow performer, like if they lowered their voices by like two decibels they could gossip about her like it was nothing. "Doesn't she have some kinda hearing thing or somethin'?"

She would think they would remember it after a while. It's not as though her talent was useless: she had used it to help convict Hanamura by being able to hear everything everyone said during the blackout at Togami's party. But had anybody thanked her? The most in the way of thanks she had ever gotten for that was Saionji giggling that awful giggle of hers and saying, "Her face, brains, style, and personality may be a failure, but at least she has good ears!"

She honestly preferred it when people insulted her to her face, when they had the balls to tell her flat out that something was wrong with her. That way she didn't have to cope with the understanding that they felt her either too impossible to talk to or too stupid to accept their criticism. Some of them were good with that--Koizumi, for example, always told people exactly what she thought of them, whether it was good or bad. Pekoyama, too, was usually pretty straightforward with people and lied very infrequently. But to Mioda, it felt like none of that mattered if she had to hear somebody making fun of her behind her back, even just once in day. Kuzuryuu, for instance, always seemed to know exactly what to say to make someone feel insecure, and then exactly how to follow it up with something that would twist the knife. Mioda was no exception to _that_ treatment:

"Why do you think she always says 'Ibuki' instead of 'I?'" he would ask whatever unlucky soul he was talking to, probably Pekoyama because they seemed to be an item or something. "I mean, she talks like a fucking cavewoman, what is that?"

What was the problem with that, exactly? Was there something offensive to him about Mioda using her first name in place of first-person pronouns? It was a quirk she had adopted some years before because it sounded cute. Well, it sounded cute with the voice she had at the time, when she was something like thirteen years old and her voice was higher and more adorable. Now, actually, her voice was considerably lower than most of her female classmates', and yes, she did have a tendency to yell most things, so referring to herself in the third person all the time was less cute and more just odd. But why did he have to mention it? Why, when that was one of the things she actually disliked about herself? Why, when, contrary to what he might have thought when making that comment, she could actually hear him say it, clear as a bell?

Yeah, she had criticisms of her classmates. It would be difficult to live with the same fifteen people on one relatively small island, day in and day out, and _not_ have insults piled up, _not_ have little things about them that irritated you and that you wished they would change. Komaeda was a nutcase, Tanaka was pretty much Brony Friendzoni, Nanami was an emotionless weirdo, Saionji was a little demon with no capacity for compassion--the list went on. But for God's sake, at least she didn't talk about them behind their backs. At least she didn't stand like ten feet away from them and make cutting remarks about them when she thought they couldn't hear. When she had something to say, everybody knew, and if she had something to say she didn't want everyone to hear, then she just didn't say it. It was as simple as that.

Why did nobody else get that? What was it about it her that made it so easy to chat about her with no regard for her feelings? Was it just that they all thought she was so weird that maybe, just maybe, she didn't _have_ feelings?

"What's with the way she foams at the mouth when she gets anxious? Does she have rabies or something?"

"Do you ever take notice of how...the songful one has a tendency to narrate what she is doing or how she is speaking? It's...discomforting, to say the least."

That's how you talk about a particularly dumb cartoon character, not an actual living human being. Maybe that's how they saw her: a cartoon, a charicature of herself, but that was just how she was. And if all she was was a collection of odd mannerisms and funny speech patterns, then so be it, but was it completely impossible for them to lay off? Had they so strong, so insatiable a need to pick on somebody that they had nothing better to do whenever she entered their line of vision?

But hey, if they made sure to speak softly, it was ok right? Because she couldn't hear?

Well, yeah, actually, she could.


End file.
